The primate saw this look, touched with surprise as Gordon caught the stir of horses and men from the further gloom. He bowed profoundly as he drew forth a letter.
“I regret to have brought Your Illustrious Excellency from your quarters,” he said in Romaic, “but my orders were specific.”
Gordon stepped close to the torch and opened the letter. The primate drew back and left him on the rock, a solitary figure in the yellow glare, watched from one side by two score of horsemen, richly accoutred, standing silent—on the other by a rough body-guard of fifty, in ragged garments, worn foot-wear, but fully armed.
Once—twice—three times Gordon read, slowly, strangely deliberate.
A shiver ran over him, and he felt the torch-light on his face like a sudden hot wave. The letter was a summons to Salona, where assembled in Congress the chiefs and primates of the whole Morea—but it was far more than this; in its significant circumlocution, its meaning diplomatic phrases, lay couched a clear invitation that seemed to transform his blood to a volatile ichor.
Gordon’s eyes turned to the shadow whence came the shifting and stamping of horses—then to the lights of the fortifications he had left. He could send back these silent horsemen, refuse to go with them, return to Missolonghi, to his desperate waiting for the English loan, to the hazardous attack on Lepanto, keeping faith with the cause, falling with it, if needs be; or—he could wear the crown of Greece!
The outlines of the situation had flashed upon him as clearly as a landscape seen by lightning. The letter in his hand was signed by a name powerful in three chanceleries. The courts of Europe, aroused by the experiment of the American colonies, wished no good of republicanism. Names had been buzzing in State closets: Jerome Bonaparte, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. But Greece had gone too far for that; if a foreign ruler be given her, he must be one acceptable to the popular mind. Governmental eyes turned now to him! He, the despised of England, a king! The founder of a fresh dynasty, the first emperor of New Greece!
Standing there, feeling his heart beat to his temples, a weird sensation came to him. There had been a time in his youth when he had camped upon that shore, when on that very rock he had struck an individual blow against Turkish barbarity. Now the hum of the voices beyond turned into a wild Suliote stave roared about a fire and he felt again the same chill, prescient instinct that had possessed him when he said: “It is as though this spot—that town yonder—were tangled in my destiny!” Was this not the fulfilment, that on the spot where he had penned his first immortal lines for Greece, should be offered him her throne?
A mental barb stung him. It was for Greek freedom he had sung then—the ancient freedom tyranny had defiled. And would this mean true liberty? The Moslem would be cast out, but for what? A coup d’état! A military dictatorship, bolstered by suzerain arms! The legislative government, with the hopes of Mavrocordato, of all the western country, fallen into the dust! Greece a puppet kingdom, paying compensation in self-respect to self-aggrandizing cabinets.
But a Greece with himself upon the throne!